Tesla Model 3 Winter Fixes: Opening a Frozen Door Handle and Thawing a Frozen Charge Port Latch
Hey guys Jeff here from pure Tesla today I took my car through the car wash in seven degree temperatures yes I intentionally took my model 3 through the car wash at seven degree temperatures and it was a touchless car wash so don’t everyone start freaking out but I was hoping a couple things would happen I was hoping that the door handles would freeze and I was hoping that the charge port latch would freeze and I wanted to do this because I want to try and find what works when those two situations happen and without using a hairdryer or without using something that’s really tough to carry with you or that you probably aren’t going to have readily available if you didn’t bring it along what are ways that will we get these things working and not leave you stranded either at a supercharger or at home when you need to get somewhere so stay tuned.
So let’s take a look at the door handles this one in particular totally frozen solid okay I’ve had conditioning on for about 20 minutes or so at about 72 degrees I then blasted up to high hoping that something would happen but man we’re just getting nothing so I’ve read that like you know if you really give it a couple of good pounds moving around a little bit you gotta be okay with the fact that it might take you a little bit of time always use your skin and not your coat because your buttons might actually Iike if you have buttons on your coat it might actually scratch your car. Skin is not going to do that so by just doing that we’re in okay so the trick is this was obviously frozen shut so handle in a very circular way give me some light knocks it should open it up and you’re good to go so when it comes to the charge port my guess is that we do have a frozen one and I’m guessing that because I took my car through the car wash on a very cold day like I said it’s about seven degrees here and we used one of the high-pressure touchless ones which tends to get water underneath that charge port cover pretty easily because of how high-pressure those nozzles are additionally just to be safe I took some water myself after I got home and poured it into the charge port latch area just to make sure that it would freeze so that we could have something to talk about here today so we’re gonna give it a shot see what it looks like hopefully we do have a frozen charge port latch so we can try out this remedy that I’ve been reading a lot of people that I’ve been reading about a lot of people suggesting but I’ve never seen anyone actually try it so let’s check it out so let’s open up the charge port here and let’s see if we have a frozen latch and give you a quick close-up here because we do.
You can hear it articulating like constantly clicking that’s the sign that you have a charge port latch that’s frozen and then the Tesla logo the light turns orange that’s when you know that you have an issue so let’s take this out and then we will see if we can employ the solution that people have been talking about and that is utilizing something that can fit in your pocket hand warmers now this is something that you can keep in your glove pot your glove box you know really anywhere in your car and your trunk whatever it may be and hopefully this solution will work for thawing the charge port latch and get you up and running pretty quickly so what I’m going to do is I’m going to open a new one I’ve never tried this before no idea if this is gonna work I’m not even sure this is going okay in the area itself but let’s shake it around and activate it so that it can get nice and warm I’ll make sure that it fires up here before we leave it it is like I said it is seven degrees outside so I’m not even sure this is going to be able to put off enough heat oh it’s warming up pretty good but I’m not sure if I’d be able to put up put off enough heat to be able to take care of this situation but we’ll find out so what we’ll do is I’m gonna oh yeah this will be actually probably pretty nice I’m gonna just kind of dam that just like that charge door will probably closed I mean we’ll close in just a minute so we’ll give it about I don’t know five to ten minutes to see how much it will thaw the charge port latch if at all and we’ll come back and we’ll try charging again stay tuned so it’s been about eight minutes since we put the hand warmer in the charge port we’re going to fire this thing back open pull this thing out oh yeah this is nice and warm yeah it feels great I’m gonna get our charger and we’ll see if we are back in business here I’ve got the light blue oh we are up and running we got the green flashing Tesla logo which means we are charging and ready to go so turns out hand warmer for eight minutes was enough to thaw my charge port latch and get us back up and running so it turns out something as small as a hand warmer that could easily fit in a lot of different places in your car actually does have a pretty good effect on thawing your charge port latch all you need to do is obviously have these with you so I would recommend going out buying a two pack right now and keeping it in your car but then also have about you know five to eight minutes to spare to be able to shove this in there after you activate it make sure you shake it around and then put it in the charge port like I said I gave it eight minutes and it seemed to thought-out just nicely the car is charging perfectly right now so definitely a viable option if you find yourself within one of these situations I’m actually used in another one of my videos you can certainly check that out so to all of you that have suggested hand-warmers but never tried it great call they worked out really well and it did it you know super quickly too which was great so those are a couple of cold buy their tips got your doors the way in which you can open a frozen door handle and then a way that you can quickly and easily thaw a frozen charge port latch hopefully that will help you stay driving in these cold winter days thanks so much for watching remember to subscribe like and share and we’ll see you in the next one you
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